The LXDE desktop was first made available for Ubuntu in October 2008, with the release of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. These early versions of Lubuntu, including 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10, were not available as separate ISO image downloads, and could only be installed on Ubuntu as separate lubuntu-desktop packages from the Ubuntu repositories. LXDE can also be retroactively installed in earlier Ubuntu versions.[13][14][15]
In February 2009, Mark Shuttleworth invited the LXDE project to become a self-maintained project within the Ubuntu community, with the aim of leading to a dedicated new official Ubuntu derivative to be called Lubuntu.[2][16][17]
Lenny, the official mascot of Lubuntu.
In March 2009, the Lubuntu project was started on Launchpad by Mario Behling, including an early project logo. The project also established an official Ubuntu wiki project page, that includes listings of applications, packages, and components.[3][18]
In August 2009, the first test ISO was released as a Live CD, with no installation option.[19][20]
Initial testing in September 2009 by Linux Magazine reviewer Christopher Smart showed that Lubuntu's RAM usage was about half of that of Xubuntu and Ubuntu on a normal installation and desktop use, and two thirds less on live CD use.[6]
In 2014 the project announced that it would be moving from being based upon GTK+ to Qt in what is termed LXQt. Work on this continued through the year, with the timed releases of Lubuntu being bug-fixes only to the GTK version.[21][22]
Lenny became Lubuntu's mascot in 2014.[23]